- Ofentse Pitse and Kabza De Small will bring a fusion of classical music and amapiano sounds to the Lyric Theatre.
- Ofentse has always had a natural talent for music with a strong church background.
- The 32-year-old orchestra lead recalls honing her skills due to a lonely childhood.
An enthusiast with a deep desire to showcase the complex arts borne from the African continent, Ofentse Pitse is a creative visionary of note.
The 32-year-old Pretoria native is widely known as Africa’s youngest women orchestra owner and conductor, founding and leading Anchored Sound, an impressive 40-piece orchestra alongside a 25-person choir.
From exclusive invitations to perform at illustrious events like the 100-year celebration of luxury fashion label Chanel to being handpicked by Alicia Keys herself to lead the global orchestra that reimagined the hitmaker’s renowned track If I Ain’t Got You for Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.
READ MORE | Zakes Bantwini on bringing the African flair to The Bridgerton Affair through music
Ofentse will now lead the second Red Bull Symphonic on home soil with the iconic Kabza De Small in an epic fusion of amapiano and classical music on 8 and 9 June 2024 at the Lyric Theatre in Gold Reef City.
With tickets for both shows already sold out, the young conductor has been working day and night with the famed DJ to produce a work of art, saying, “People should expect some magic, they should expect to be immersed in something that they’ve never experienced because we’re really putting a lot into this.
“We’re putting a lot of ourselves, we’re putting a lot of our minds and I think we’re sort of drawing inspiration from our ancestors, so this is really bigger than us.”
Celebrating a truly African merge
Red Bull’s global symphonic showcases have previously fused classical music with unconventional genres like hip hop, with world-renowned artists like Rick Ross and producer Metro Boomin taking their music to new heights
With amapiano’s addictive rhythmic log drum beats and its heavenly melodic tunes, it comes as a no brainer that they entrust the talented Ofentse and Kabza De Small for the first-ever South African showcase and reimagine hits like Khusela and Imithandazo.
Ofentse – who had just come from pulling a late night creating the music for the show at the time of our conversation – shares the creative process for the upcoming showcase.
“I did not want us to make the mistake of making this orchestra sound like it's from Vienna, like it's going to sound Baroque, right? And then I was like, okay, so we need to create an African orchestra, which is essentially an extension of my brand, which is really rooted in not just doing the Eurocentric idea of orchestra.
“I, more often than not, really try to infuse some African instruments, your percussions and stuff. So, I was like, okay, with this one as well, let's include a bit of Africa, your cora, your saba drums, your dundun drums, your marimbas so you have that fusion in this sound as well.
“And then the next step was looking at the people in my reach who I wanted to collaborate with from an arranging point of view. And I brought some amazing titans, really, they’re bad ass at what they do. Adam Howard, Bryan Schimmel, David Cousins and Yonela Mnana. They're helping me really sort of like fuse the two worlds and, I mean, they're great as arrangers. And then I was like, okay, this needs a choir because if we are going to do this right, how about we do a piano opera? So, that's where the whole planning and the connecting of things came about.”
What it takes to lead the charge in groundbreaking music
Growing up in the northern Pretoria township Mabopane, with deep spiritual roots and attending the Salvation Army church with her mother and grandmother, shaped Ofentse’s love for the sweet sounds of the church’s famous bass band.
This is where she first learned to play the trumpet at 12 years old.
The conductor – who also splits her time between working as an architect where she pursues her artistic vision for African spaces – explains to us how tagging along with her matriarchs to their weekly kitchen parties after Sunday service shaped her passion for music.
“There was a certain scene or themes that would be brought in during the day. I know how they would start the day with certain type of music, I know after we eat there's a certain type of repertoire that will come out and then before we leave it's the emotional music where everyone is singing at the top of their lungs.
It's your Lenny Williams – ‘Girl you know I love you’ and stuff. So, it was like, the more I observed that, I was like, 'oh there's a meaning to this music thing. Like there's a meaning to what this music means to them and the emotions that it evokes'.”
READ MORE | Mandisi Dyantyis talks love for music and the beauty of jazz
The pressures of being South Africa’s first woman orchestra lead
Being dubbed as the country’s first-ever women orchestra conductor in no easy feat.
An undoubtedly gifted child who spent much of her time drawing cartoon characters with the paper and stationery her mother brought home for her, Ofentse recalls painful childhood memories of not being chosen for games played on the street by her peers.
While this left her feeling isolated as a child, she also feels a relation to Kabza De Small, where she understands that their narratives as the first young Black women orchestra lead in Mzansi and “the king of amapiano” wouldn’t exist if they were like everybody else.
“I've always just kind of had this childhood wound of feeling like I'm not picked and having to work extra hard. Because when you have a gift, you are, more often than not, you are always going to be ousted,” Ofentse laments.
“You're always going to be the other one. You're not going to be part of a group and I've had to kind of learn to find my own or create my own community, my own circle. Whenever that imposter syndrome or that whisper in my ear comes in and tells me that I'm not enough, I'm not doing good. So, I believe that in my isolation is where I have gotten to excel and be really good and learn more in what I do. But there's the inverse of that where, at times, it is quite lonely.”
While the road to stardom may be a solitary one, Ofentse’s dreams of bringing Africa back to its rightful throne and work with collaborative masters in different genres to make her mark in history as not just any other classical conductor.
